For those of you who haven't heard, we are now beekeepers, apiarists, hivers. Our two backyard hives are now inhabited, and as of Saturday, we are buzzing with activity around here (last time I'll make that pun, I promise).
Stage One: prepare the hives.
We disassembled and painted the hives well in advance so there wouldn't be any painty chemically smell to them when the bees were ready to move in.
Stage Two: position the hives where we want them.
Bees don't like it when their hives are moved so it's important to think about it carefully. We decided on the back corner of our yard. It's close to the garden but not in the way, easily cordoned off from small people, and gets early morning sun to help warm them up fast each day.
Stage Three: Moving in day.
The bees came over from Utah in a screened box, one box and one queen per hive. That's 10,000 bees in 1.5 cubic feet times two. The queen is in a tiny little cage in there, separated from the unwashed masses so they don't kill her right away. Bill reached inside, took out her box, and plugged the hole with a marshmallow. (Over the next couple of days the bees will eat through the marshmallow until they've freed her from her cage. By then they'll be used to her scent and come to think of her as their queen.) Then he rubberbanded her to the middle of a frame (one of those black rectangles pictured above) and placed the frame in the hive. Next he turned the box upside down and just shook out bees over the hive and hoped most of them would land inside, with their queen.
These are the boxes next to their hives the first evening. On Sunday night they were almost completely empty. And today the boxes are ghost towns while the hives are quite full and active.
Stage Four: Wait and see. Now we just leave them alone pretty much. Bill gave them some sugar syrup in a mason jar to give them some easy food and energy. But we don't bother them or take apart their hives for a couple days. At some point Bill will open them up and make sure the queens have exited their cages. But generally speaking, they are now on their own and just residents of the backyard. We probably won't get any honey this year, as these ladies are working hard to make their house a home, but we'll play that by ear, check on them occasionally, and see how everyone does. Bill went from the only man in a house of 4 ladies (Gretchen, Maggie, Tessa, Eliza) to the only man in a house of 20,004 ladies!
And we need your help in names. While we can't name all the bees, obviously, we want to name our queens. That way we can say "checked on Mary's hive today" or "saw some yellow jackets trying to get into Elizabeth's." Any suggestions for our two queens?
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